Just a brief note here. We’ve got domestic spying. We’ve got secret warrantless wiretaps, no court oversight. We’ve got the NSA puffed out like blowfish ready to explode their venemous spikes if we so much as try to find out the truth. We’ve got complicity from AT&T and other major carriers; companies that care so little for their customers they sell them out without so much as notice or explanation.
But it gets worse: we’ve got invisible laws. The argument from the government when suits are brought to try to force oversight of these secret programs? “We can’t tell you why, but trust us, it’s completely legal.” That in itself is either a lie, a crime, or both. There is a very good reason for transparency in government, for transparency in law. The reason? While “ignorance is not a defense” if the laws are visible, invisible laws are not .. well, lawful. If a police officer gave you a ticket for speeding, but didn’t indicate your speed, it would be in your interest to contest the ticket. If he got up on the stand in court and said “I can’t disclose the speed this person was ticketed for,” the ticket would be dropped. It is simply not compatible with a free and open society to have this sort of situation.
If you really have a justification for these spying programs, you need to get off your asses, into a FISA or other closed-hearing court, and outline your reasons there. Any judge that simply accepts the argument “we have reason, but we can’t say,” is not doing their job. Not by a long shot.
That is all.